Hacking the Curriculum: Creative Computing and the Power of Play

By Ian Livingstone & Shahneola Saeed

Given the massive impact of the videogames industry on the UK economy, computing in schools is still catching up to a large extent. Prior to 2014 the ICT curriculum in schools focused on the use of Microsoft Office software and little else; the creative programming skill required to grow a huge games industry was developed by individual hobbyists in their bedrooms rather than through the school system. Acknowledging that our children need to be ready for a digital future, recent curriculum changes have attempted to address this, with coding being described as ‘the new Latin’ by many reformers since 2010 . However, this in turn has landed a mass of new curriculum initiatives on the plates of teachers, many of whom only studied the old ICT curriculum if they studied ICT at all.read more

Gewalt im Computerspiel: Facetten eines Vergnügens

(Violence in Computer Games: Aspects of a Pleasure)

By Christoph Bareither

Christoph Bareither’s book is an investigation into the nature of the pleasure offered by the violent aspects of computer games. The approach is neither psychological nor pedagogical, but ethnographic, and there is a deliberate avoidance of the question as to why people like violence in computer games. Given that they do, it investigates instead the nature of that pleasure. The research is based on three main bodies of evidence: an historical survey of computer games magazines covering the period from 1983 until 2014; a selection of “Let’s Play” YouTube videos; and, finally, direct comments from gamers themselves obtained through interviews and through participating in multiplayer games with them. This evidence is used by Bareither to discover the emotional experiences that players have when interacting with computer-mediated representations of physical violence.read more

Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming

Edited by Pat Harrigan and Matthew G. Kirschenbaum

Pat Harrigan and Matthew G. Kirschenbaum’s Zones of Control (2016) is the first book in MIT’s ‘Game Histories’ series edited by Henry Lowood and Raiford Guins whose own volume in the series, Debugging Game History: A Critical Lexicon, was published in June 2016.

While the book inaugurates Lowood and Guins’ new series, Zones of Control is the fourth of Harrigan’s collection on games and gaming to be published by MIT (following in the footsteps of First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game (2004), Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media (2007), and Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (2009), all edited with Noah Wardrip-Fruin). While the latest volume sees Harrigan joined by a new co-editor the general scope and ambition of the collection will feel familiar to readers of the ‘Person’ trilogy. Zones of Control is a large and impressive volume that brings together a wide range of contributors from diverse backgrounds, writing on a topic that is itself wide ranging and diverse – namely wargaming – both tabletop and digital.read more

Mark R. Johnson on Bloomsbury’s new game studies series.

Following my recent post about Bloomsbury’s forthcoming series ‘Play Beyond the Computer,’ I contacted the series editor Mark R. Johnson to ask if he could tell us more about his plans for the series. Here’s what he had to say about the rationale for the series, its impressive editorial board, and the first volumes that they’ve got lined up.read more

Followers of the blog may be interested in the cfp below. Just as interesting is the news that this is part of a what sounds like a really exciting new series coming from Bloomsbury Academic.

We are soliciting chapter proposals for a volume tentatively entitled The Casino Games and Classic Card Games Reader: Communities, Cultures, and Play. This volume would be the first in a new series under consideration at Bloomsbury Academic entitled Play Beyond the Computer.read more